Women's Rights Abused in Afghanistan
Ancient Prejudice Against Females Is Hard to Defeat
Apr 20, 2009
During April 2009 the following incidents took place:
- Women’s rights campaigner, Sitara Achakzai, was shot and killed in Kandahar;
- 19-year-old Gul Pecha and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Abdul Aziz, ran away from their village to get married. They were captured, condemned to death by Islamic leaders, and executed in public;
- Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a new law governing Shiite Muslim women that explicitly permitted husbands to rape their wives, and forbade women from working or attending school without the permission of their husbands; and,
- More than 200 women protesting against discrimination were confronted by men who cursed them and threw stones at them.
These events are symptoms of a deep prejudice against women in Afghanistan. For centuries the male-dominated society has subjected women to what Westerners view as extreme cruelty.
Women Join to Fight for Rights
In 1977, some brave women set up the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). They seek to improve the human rights of their sisters and some of them have been killed for their efforts.
RAWA issued a statement on International Women’s Day (8 March 2008) outlining the daily reality for women in Afghanistan.
“Women are exchanged with dogs, girls are gang-raped, men…kill their wives viciously and violently, burn them by throwing hot water, cut off their nose and toes, innocent women are stoned to death, and other heinous crimes are being committed.”
Malalai Joya is a women’s rights activist and member of Afghanistan’s national parliament. According to an April 15, 2009 report in The Age (Australia) She “has lived in hiding for five years and never spends more than 24 hours at the same house… She sleeps, eats, and breathes in the shadow of six heavily armed bodyguards and wears a burqa to conceal her identity.”
Grim Statistics on Afghan Women's Rights
IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, gives some grim statistics on the lives of women in Afghanistan:
- Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth;
- 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate;
- 30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan;
- 1 in every 3 Afghan women experience physical, psychological, or sexual violence;
- 44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan; and,
- 70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan
Troops Are Fighting for What?
As of February 2009, according to BBC News there were more than 56,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, among them more than 2,000 Canadians. One justification for this massive international effort is to improve human rights in the country, but, according to Judy Rebick that effort is not going well. Ms. Rebick is the former head of Canada’s National Action Committee on the Status of Women. In an interview with The Globe and Mail (April 18, 2009) she said: “How has the war helped women in Afghanistan? It hasn’t…We can’t bomb our way to equality.” She says it would be better for Canada to bring its soldiers home and support groups such as RAWA to bring about change from within.
However, historian Margaret MacMillan says pulling out of Afghanistan is not an option. In the same Globe and Mail article she says Canadian and other soldiers must stay and our politicians must be firmer with Afghanistan's government in pressing for human rights improvements.
Certainly the country has a long way to go before women enjoy even basic human rights.
